The kinetic object called "Atom" was first built on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the revolution on the square in front of the Kurchatov Institute in 1967. Then a six-meter sphere of a self-stressed structure made of aluminum tubes was designed and built by 26-year-old Vyacheslav Koleichuk, his wife Marina and engineer Gennady Rykunov. The engineers of the Kurchatov Institute, who possessed advanced technologies and knowledge at that time, took part in the creation of the object, - says the Garage explication. An openwork ball on a thin metal rod, stuck into the ground at one end, was illuminated in three colors and spun in the wind, it was accompanied by the music of Lev Theremin on the theremin instrument he invented. The one and a half century anniversary of the revolution was celebrated in Moscow magnificently, but the design invented by Vyacheslav Koleichuk, then a recent graduate of the Moscow Architectural Institute, was definitely the most futuristic object of celebrations, an object of art, not ideology.
Now the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art has recreated Atom as part of the Garage Square Commissions program in the pandanus exhibition dedicated to kinetic art.
Transatlantic Initiative "- however, the exhibition and" Atom "crossed like heavenly bodies - for only three days, from May 6 to 9. The idea to recreate the object belongs to the curator of the "Garage" Snezhana Krasteva, the artist's daughter Anna Koleichuk helped to create it, modern technologies were used in the construction, but the central proton ball was designed by Vyacheslav Koleichuk with his son Dmitry.
The music instead of the lost track was written by the composer Nikolai Khrust according to the rules (or logic?) Of aleatorics, that is, the track will gradually change and will not be completely repeated, but it is played on the same Theremin's theremin and on an ovaloid - an instrument that Koleichuk invented. Cosmic melody, from the field of the music of the spheres; how else can an atom sing? In my own way, somehow.
The exhibition has already closed, and Atom - a multi-colored star in the night sky above the park, singing along with itself with creaks and ringing - stands on the lawn in front of the end of the Garage exhibition pavilion, which was transformed in 2012-2015 by Rem Koolhaas's project. Together, they resemble a futuristic ship that has sunk slightly into the ground over the past 60 years. The polycarbonate-covered pavilion, a remake of The Four Seasons of the 1960s, is a ship; an atomic ball on a barbell, a reborn object from 1967 - its nose.
They sang well, both glow and shine, or move, or not - froze, fearing to disturb something in the 21st century. No wonder Irina Kulik
He calls the “Atom” retrofuturism: in order to admire the romantic impossibility of flight, looking at it, you need to strain your emotions and intellect, suggesting that we are facing a reproduction, a monument to a futuristic dream. That the dream is 60 years old and the perception has changed. What makes the installation even more fragile, as if a little brittle, I want to take care of it and hurt the stretch marks terribly - it's terrible to damage this wonderful ball that flew to us from the easy and free sixties.
Anna Koleichuk said at the opening that one of her father's favorite definitions was the word "easy" - he really created very light objects, for example, the Standing thread - which could be thinner. Here is the ball, permeable, hovering, slightly swaying, very light. Elements similar to him can then be found in many of Koleichuk's structures - pipes, connections … and the inability to quickly understand what is tense there, what forces are holding him, and the desire to believe: an intelligent person has done everything, holds on and even sings silently - do not touch anything.
Vyacheslav Koleichuk helped to recreate "Atom" in Gorky Park and did not live to see the opening of the facility for only a month. It turns out that "Atom" in some way closed the circle of his creativity - he was the first large object, he also became the last. Now - and this was felt at the opening - it is perceived as a monument to Koleichuk, one of the most notable, and probably the most enthusiastic master of Russian kineticism, the author of the Standing Thread, Gravitsapa from Kin-Dza-Dzy !, a three-dimensional triangle with three right angles and books about Kineticism. To a man who, as the press wrote in the year of the opening of two personal exhibitions (2012), all his life, expanded the limits of the possible and our ideas about the impossible. A good monument is kinetic, even the fact that it will be dismantled is not bad - and hardly anyone would argue that during his lifetime Vyacheslav Koleichuk was a “charged particle”.
The Atom will stand in front of the Garage until August 26th.
